Sadly, with work commitments looming, my attendance at any more festivals this summer is looking fairly unlikely. But if I don’t get along to another one, I certainly went out on a high at this year’s Shambala. For me the thing that sets this festival apart from a lot of the others is quite simply its friendliness. OK there were an awful lot of my festival acquaintances, both old and new, to muck about with anyway. But it’s the fact that pretty much everybody at Shambala has a smile on their face, and is happy to chat away with complete strangers, which has made me come away with such a warm glow and so many blissful memories.

The festival hasn’t really changed a great deal since we were there last year and all the major venues were pretty much as I remembered them. A lot more effort and imagination seemed to have been put into the “Enchanted Woods” this year with lots of interesting art installations and even a couple of small venues in which to dance the night away.

In fact there seemed to be lots more in the way of the wonderful “secret” micro-environments all over the site this year. My personal favourite from last year, the People’s Front Room, was sadly absent but this was more than made up for by the return of the 1940’s themed Waiting Room, where I somehow mananged to lose 6 hours as the rain fell on Saturday night and was also responsible for me missing most of the fireworks on the Sunday. I never even found the Ska Bar, which was tucked away somewhere in the campsite, although Bearded Kitten were a lot more obvious in their “Flying Dutchman” pirate ship with swashbuckling themed games aplenty.

As always the range of workshops to involve yourself with was simply immense, with all manner of song and dance to participate in as well as a vast variety of things to make and do and interesting, thought provoking environmental discussions. The Healing Field was as relaxing as ever and once again the Saturday afternoon saw a staggering proportion of punters donning their fancy dress for the “Tribes” themed parade.

And once again we got pretty lucky with the weather. Apart from the aforementioned period of relatively light rain on the Saturday night we had virtually dry conditions throughout and were able to enjoy just lazing on the grass for most of the festival. In fact during all of the 7 festivals I’ve attended this summer we haven’t had a single one which could really be described as being the least bit muddy, which has been such a blessing after the seemingly perpetual mudbath of 2012 and has contributed in no small way to making 2013 one of the most enjoyable festival summers I can remember. Roll on May!